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| Dissertation / PhD Thesis/Book | PreJuSER-52779 |
2000
Forschungszentrum, Zentralbibliothek
Jülich
Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/20579
Report No.: Juel-3740
Abstract: The accumulation of civil Plutonium from nuclear energy production continuously attains attention as a world wide safety concern . A reliable elimination of the civil Plutonium as weil as that from dismantling of nuclear war heads may be achieved only by its fission; interrnediate storage or deep underground disposal - whatever technical line is followed aliows only a temporary limited "elimination" of that weapons grade material. Plutonium can be fissioned either in todayls nuclear reactors or with future reactors or accelerator driven Systems being constructed especialiy for this task . The application of Thorium based nuclear fuels, containing Plutonium as a fissile material, aliows a very efficient consumption of Plutonium as the breeding chain of Thorium produces no Plutonium. 'U is breed instead, which in some ways is classified lass dangerous than Plutonium. This paper analyses the basic features of Thorium based fuels in pressurised water reactors. A comparison of the material behaviour between Uranium based and Thorium based fuels has been done . A literature survey shows the experience already existing for Thorium as a nuclear fuel. The burn-up behaviour of Thorium based mixed oxide fuels is eompared with the Uranium ones by well benchmarked cell calculations up to burn-ups of 100 GWd/tHm . First, consumption ratios for Plutonium and Transuranium elements are compared . lt turned out that the application of Thorium based fuel doubles the consumption ratio of Plutonium in comparison to Uranium mixed oxide fuel . This also becomes evident evaluating the mass balances with respect to the generated nuclear energy . Also in this case the Thorium based fuel demonstrates its superior Performance ; it generates more than 90 % of the energy due to Plutonium fissioning, thus perforrning approximately 40 % better than Uranium based mixed oxide fuel . But the large amounts of Transuranium elements remaining in both types of fuel are disadvantageous ; thus these fuels rnay not be seen as a solution of the Plutonium Problem for the purposes of avoiding large Plutonium amounts to be disposed off. Besides the valuation of consumption ratios the feed back due to the change of fuel musst be evaluated with respect to the safety behaviour of the reactor . Basing an the reactivity feedback coefficients of the fuel temperature, the moderator temperature, the boron concentration and the voided core, it can be shown, that Thorium based rnixed oxide fuel performs better than Uranium based mixed oxide fuel . But both types of fuel rann into trouble, if very high burn-ups are desired.
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